Expectations and planning in honeybees

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Reward expectations are a key product of acquired knowledge about the properties of reward. Studies on reward learning and the subsequent development of reward expectations are critical for understanding the rules controlling goal-directed behaviours, and for the assessment of the cognitive complexity underlying decision making and planning. Reward expectations and incentive phenomena have systematically been addressed only in vertebrate species, probably because such phenomena are frequently linked to complex cognitive abilities only ubiquitous in animals with large brains. We have recently documented for the first time that honeybees also develop long-term reward expectations. These expectations can guide their foraging behaviour after a relatively long pause and in the complete absence of reinforcement. We aim to further extend these findings. To this end, we shall focus on the behaviour of free-flying bees foraging on artificial feeders that allow controlling both reinforcement rate and reward predictability (instrumental conditioning), and the conditioning of the honeybee proboscis extension response (classical conditioning), which allows manipulations of neural circuits through pharmacological and electrophysiological studies.